China created 13.12 million jobs in 2015
February 29, 2016, 4:43 am

China faces large pressure creating jobs for university graduates [Xinhua]

China said on Monday that urban employment held up in 2015 even as economic growth slowed, but the Human Resources ministry warned that the pace of job creation is slowing.

More than 13.12 million new jobs were generated for urban residents in the world’s second largest economy in 2015, a senior government official said on Monday.

Yin Weimin, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, told a press conference that China had created more than 13 million new jobs for urban residents annually since 2013, though the reading for 2015 was down 0.8 per cent from the year before.

At the end of 2015, China’s total employed population stood at 774.51 million, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.

China’s labor productivity, measured by output per worker, rose 6.6 percent year on year in 2015, NBS said.

China’s economy grew 6.9 per cent year on year in 2015, the slowest annual expansion in 25 years, with GDP reaching 67.67 trillion yuan.

Earlier last week, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said China will allocate 100 billion yuan (£13.5 billion) over two years to relocate workers laid off as a result of China’s efforts to curb overcapacity in sectors like steel.

The urban unemployment rate hovered between 4 per cent and 4.5 per cent in the last decade, even during the global financial crisis, partly because it does not account for China’s 298 million migrant labourers.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.